Tag: Steven Hayne

Dr. Steven Hayne was removed from the list of approved coroners in Mississippi. Now, coroners there are trying to rewrite the rules to bring him back. Radly Balko reports:

But now a sizable number of Mississippi's elected county coroners are plotting to bring Hayne back by redrawing law-enforcement boundaries to sidestep state law.

The background to Dr. Hayne:

Hayne had come under heavy criticism in the preceding months, including an October 2007 investigation and series of follow-up stories in Reason; the DNA exonerations of two men wrongly convicted of rape and murder due largely to testimony from Hayne and his frequent collaborator, the disgraced bite mark expert Dr. Michael West; and the Mississippi State Supreme Court's dismissal of Hayne's dubious testimony [PDF] in the murder trial of then-13-year-old Tyler Edmonds. Hayne, who is not board-certified in forensic pathology, had been performing 1,200 to 1,800 autopsies per year, several times the maximum number allowed by his field's certifying organization.

One of our prior posts on Hayne is here. Reaction from Innocence Projects: [More...]

Dr. Steven Hayne, Mississippi's medical examiner for hire, had his faulty forensic work exposed when two inmates, wrongfully convicted in separate child murders, were exonerated a few weeks ago after serving 15 years in prison. The Innocence Project has more on his background and on the two clients recently released.

The Innocence Project and the Mississippi Innocence Project today issued 23 formal Public Records Act requests that will show the extent to which discredited medical examiner Steven Hayne is using state facilities to conduct autopsies – and potentially using federally-funded crime labs for forensic work that is fraught with negligence and misconduct.